Tag Archives: hope

“On the other end of the spectrum,” said [Vaclav] Havel, there are those who insist on ‘speaking the truth simply because it [will] lead somewhere tomorrow, or the day after, or ever.’ This urge, too, is fully human, every bit as much as the temptation to despair. Such daring, he argued, grows out of the faith that repeating truth makes sense in itself, regardless of whether it is ‘appreciated, or victorious, or repressed for the hundredth time. At the very least, it [means] that someone [is] not supporting the government of lies.’ Havel admitted, however, that defiance is not undertaken for its own sake but because people cannot exist in the absence of hope. Logically or not, people act out of faith ‘that a seed once sown [will] one day take root and send forth a shoot. No one [knows] when.'”